REVIEW – The problem with Firewalk Studios’ game is that it tries to be successful in a very overfilled genre. That in itself is a bit of a problem, but on top of that, its business model can’t work for many, and therefore it’s not so sure that it can be so successful in the long run. Even if he goes down a different path, it may not work for him.

It’s not a free-to-play game, it’s a paid or, as it’s called in the business, premium title, so Overwatch 2, for example, has a head start on Concord (and not Concorde…).

From the first pre-orders to the moments before launch

It doesn’t matter when this character set was made (the game hasn’t been released yet). Concorde hasn’t been released yet, and the beta on Steam hasn’t even been played by 2500 people at once. No offense, but that’s not an audience to build on. That’s why PlayStation Plus subscribers got free access, because cross-play allowed them to build a larger audience, at least on console. It’s a live service game with a live service model. Sony already has something like this, Helldivers 2, but it’s not a hero shooter (different characters, different abilities, shooting game, usually in a team setup), it’s a co-op shooting title, which is better. Concord was made thanks to several veterans of shooter games (they worked on everything from Call of Duty to Destiny) and has a slightly Destiny-influenced gameplay. He took some elements from there, and perhaps rightly so. That’s why it can be distinguished from, for example, Valorant (if it’s already on the PlayStation 5/Xbox Series) or Apex Legends. The game can be visually distinguished, but it’s the whole that needs to be looked at.

You can’t judge it by the graphics alone or the gameplay alone, you have to look at the whole picture, but you can point out that there are things that are very strange. Not everything is different from the others, so the game modes, the structure, the progression system and even to some extent the monetization are absolutely the same as in the others. Only here you have to pay 40 dollars. And there’s the issue. The maps are fair but a bit lifeless, the game modes are familiar and don’t require much learning, but on the plus side, the matches are relatively fast and that might be what makes them so interesting. During the beta, it all felt a little half-baked, and that feeling has been reinforced in hindsight. It’s not quite the same tone of opinion as it was during the beta, and that’s because there’s a little bit of fear that this game won’t be able to survive. The title was no coincidence. Maybe there are too many hero shooters, and the different model means that it might not be able to keep up with the others. Does anyone remember the example of LawBreakers? Not really.

Amongst the thoughts, it’s swimming against the current

In the case of Concord, it’s hard to understand why those story vignettes and short scenes only appear over time in the game. If this is an attempt to entice the audience, it may not be a successful solution. It’s a cute concept, but it alone can’t sustain the load. Stylistically, it’s a bit like Guardians of the Galaxy, and that goes for the look and sound of the characters (and it’s especially in this area that the game has a surprisingly strong performance). You get the feeling that the rest of the PlayStation Studios team helped them with the presentation. The facial animations are quite good, the writing style is acceptable… but if they’re going to dripfeed us with plot elements with 90-second cutscenes each week, it’s not going to keep many people coming back. Concord, by the way, has 16 characters who can fight each other in PvP modes (there are six of them, and there were three playlists during the betas). Like Overwatch 2, they don’t seem to care about PvE. Compared to other similar games (Rainbow Six: Siege can be mentioned here), Concord aims to cover a larger audience, and so it’s not just represented in one mode style, but in multiple, so that both the casual and competitive players can find what they need. The characters have also been designed to be somewhat competitive in this and that, although it’s not so sure that everyone will win over the players, and the only question before launch may be whether the somewhat OP stuff seen in the beta can be suppressed by Firewalk.

The maps are at least large enough to be used properly and easy enough to navigate. The quality of the maps is good, but they might not be memorable enough. The combat, on the other hand, is quite good. The shooting itself is very well done. It’s not mechanical, it’s not hard-to-follow, and it doesn’t fool us too much. Even if you choose to fight in melee. Like Baz, who throws knives from a long distance and can track his enemies even beyond the wall. Characters are easy to learn, but not easy to master on a professional level (easy to learn, hard to master), and this becomes especially important when it comes to synergies with teammates and their abilities. Their types (healer, support, tank…) are easy to recognize. Let’s not forget that between rounds, healing pads, mines, sensors, for example, will be preserved and can be dropped by multiple characters on the maps during competitive modes. This will be strategically important. Performance was not a problem on either PlayStation 5 or PC, the netcode was impeccable, the sound design was distinctive enough to distinguish the important things, but not everything was perfectly set up. Spatially, however, everything that happened during the matches was well placed. This was all the more important because of the lack of a mini-map. Perhaps it could be the Variant Knockout that could still thoroughly twist the matches in competitive modes, but since the bottom of page 2 is slowly approaching (who will sleep?), we’ll skip to page 3 with this segueway.

Staying in the match?

If we win one round, we can’t use the same hero variant in the next. By doing this, Concord forces us to play a more varied gameplay, and by doing this, we can’t stick to one character and thus have to reach out to others. Also, passive buffs have been sorted into systems (role for everyone, like tactician), plus if someone on our team has already picked someone we wanted, we’re out of luck. If someone picks a tactician hero, then everyone in the team can reload faster. There are other buffs, so you have to think variedly about who pokes what so that everyone gets useful buffs. Meanwhile, there should be some sort of punishment for ragequitting players, because there was none in the beta. The beta didn’t have a tutorial, they’ve included that with the full one, and there’s an in-game store, more content, so it makes sense that the audience will have a more complete experience than the beta. And from now on, some things from the beta will be carried over, because it’s going to be here, and maybe that’s enough, because there’s another bigger set of characters coming this week, and there’s other fun things to do for the perpetrator of this character bunch. Great animations (which is really important in first-person view), fair graphics, the sounds aren’t forgettable (although the maxing sound of the skill pickup, for example, is still mixed quite loudly).

The vitality bar in the lower left corner was a bit too protruding. The last time something like that was used much was in PS1 games, and regarding health, it should be mentioned that HP does not regenerate, so you have to pick up pickups on the levels. The old-school effect is also noticeable in the fonts used, as they look a bit pixelated (but on purpose!). The movement of the characters feels a bit airy, but it doesn’t have a cartoony feel (Overwatch 2 went in that direction), and their skills and abilities are very different, so the developers have done a sophisticated job here as well. During matches, there will be a lot of sound effects and speech, so you’ll know who threw a grenade, who activated their ultimate, and so on. Currently, one of the game modes is Trophy Hunt, which is roughly Call of Duty’s Kill Confirmed, and Takedown is the local equivalent of Team Deathmatch. Later, Zone Control (rule the zone and keep the other team away), Signal Hunt (find the zone via the signals), Cargo Contract (roughly the payload of Overwatch 2), and Conflict (find the designated zone and defend it or defeat the other team) are also be part of the game.

Soda will do, but will it be enough to stay alive?

Concord is a time bomb. If it does not become MEMORABLE long-term, the audience will quickly forget about it. And then the number of players will decrease even more. And then the seasons will have no meaning. And then this game will cease to exist, because the fact that it won’t be playable offline and that it won’t be preserved is a sure thing, because the Stop Killing Games campaign has exactly these kinds of creations in their crosshairs. They take down the servers and then poof, that’s it. The game gets a 7, but it’s also a bit harmless…

-V-

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Firewalk Studios

Style: hero shooter

Release: August 23, 2024.